owners will miss the chance to guide their country to World Cup glory.

Explaining its decision, the publisher said FIFA 14 players can still experience the World Cup in Ultimate Team mode, but wanted the focus to be on the previous-generation offerings.

A statement reads: "For our fans on the new generation of consoles and playing FIFA 14, we will have a range of engaging content, promotions and tournament within FIFA Ultimate Team so that those fans can experience the World Cup in unique and fun ways."

Laser focus

The company said it wanted to create a 'great game,' within its available resources, which would be available within to as many people as possible.

In a lengthy statement, it explained: "When we made the decision we considered a number of factors but most importantly we wanted to create a great game within our development resources that could reach as many people as possible and the way to do that was make our best game yet on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

"We gave our team the mandate of setting a laser focus on building the highest quality game for Xbox 360 and PS3 they could, and that's exactly what they are doing."

Seeing as, judging by the company's previous, the World Cup game will simply be an international football-focused version of the regular game, it's unlikely to upset too many folks, but EA's rationale is interesting nonetheless.